Grant Proposal For Health Promotion Essay On Alcoholism In Australia.

The Grant Proposal assignment is an opportunity for students to demonstrate their individual mastery of the learning outcomes for the topic. Students will do this by preparing a grant proposal to fund a health promotion project for a community and health priority of their choice. The only restriction on subject matter is that this cannot be a proposal for the same project that you worked on in your team Project Plan.

To understand and develop the fundamental skills required submitting a grant application for funding future health promotion projects.

What is a Grant Proposal?

Grants are provided so that a funding body can finance projects. Usually, organisations will apply for funding from either internal sources (ie from within their own funding bodies) or will apply for funds from outside bodies (ie NHMRC, ARC etc). Grant proposals require good supporting evidence as to why an organisation should provide money. Therefore, you will need to qualify the importance of the project with good academic articles. Like the project plan, templates exist that require following when applying for funding. A budget must also be developed to support where you will spend the money that you are asking for. YOU WILL NEED TO USE THE GRANT PROPOSAL TEMPLATE PROVIDED ON FLO.

Grant proposal guidelines

The grant proposal must be developed for a new health promotion project. You cannot use the project that you worked on within your group. You will need to include evidence from journal articles and other reliable sources to support the reason why you would like to apply for funding. The funding you apply for must be supported by reasonable explanation as to what you will use that funding for. So, if you want to ask for a large amount of money, you must show what that money will be used for in your budget. You must also include a detailed timeline as to when aspects of the project will occur etc. This can be in the form of a Gantt Chart. The template gives you the overview with corresponding headings that you must use.
 

This project is based on raising awareness among the Australian people regarding the excessive dependency on alcohol that is causing serious health problems of the people. From a study, it has been found that in the last two decades, alcoholism has increased significantly in Australia that is resulting in various health problems in the people. More and more people are having heart attacks, strokes, cirrhosis of liver and other diseases that arise from excessive drinking of alcohol. It has been found that in addition to the Australian men, most of the women above the age of 40 are strongly addicted to drinking. In addition, underage drinking has become quite prevalent in the country that is evident from the growing number of court cases regarding the same. For this reason, a campaign will be undertaken, urging people to understand the end effects of alcohol and to stop drinking alcohol.

The main health issue under focus in this proposal includes various deadly and terminal diseases that are caused by heavy alcohol consumption. In addition to the older people facing significant health issues regarding heavy drinking, it has also been found that most of the heavy drinkers are taking alcohol from a very young age and have continued to drink until they face serious health problems (Babor, Robaina & Jernigan, 2015). Due to the heavy alcohol abuse, drinking has almost become a culture in the country and most of the people continue to drink thinking it as a part of their tradition. Hence, it is required to raise awareness among the people regarding the harmful impacts of alcoholism. 

The severity of the problem lies in the fact that every year, thousands of people from all age groups (even in 12-14 year old children) are falling prey to the deadly diseases like cirrhosis of liver due to excessive drinking of alcohol. Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) conducted a poll around the country regarding the people’s thoughts on the hot topic of alcoholism in the country. From the poll, the following statistics were gained (World Health Organization & World Health Organization. Management of Substance Abuse Unit, 2014).

• 78% of the poll participants believe alcohol abuse is prevalent in Australia.
• 78% of the poll participants believe there are currently no suitable measures taken by the Government to reduce the harmful effects of alcohol abuse.
• 73% of the poll participants believe that the problem regarding alcoholism will continue to increase in the next 10-20 years.
• 60% of the poll participants stated that the alcohol sponsorship in sports events must be banned to prevent promotion of the alcoholic products.
• 29% of the poll participants stated that they have been subjected to domestic violence by strong alcohol addicts.

This survey is merely a basic statistical analysis on the growing alcohol related problem in the country whereas the problem is reality is much bigger than these statistics speak. Some researchers pointed out that most of the Australians do not prefer to speak publicly about their drinking habits and hence, the actual statistics cannot be generated. Alcohol addiction is detected mostly when the people are admitted to the hospitals due to alcohol related diseases like cirrhosis of liver, throat cancer and others.

What is a Grant Proposal?

From a statistics collected in 2014-15, it was found that an alarming 80.6% of Australians over the age of 18 are alcohol drinkers. In addition, 85.6% of all the males in Australia were drinkers whereas 75.7% of all the women in Australia were drinkers. This single statistic contains the evidence of extreme drinking problem in the country (Kubacki et al., 2015). Another statistics show that around 50% of all the people within the age of 12 to 18 have drank alcohol that proves that the young generation is also significantly affected by the alcoholism issue. 

Since the focus of this project is raising awareness for prevention of alcoholism, there is no specific target group for the project. Awareness campaigns will be conducted for all age groups starting from 12. This is mainly because from the initial study, it has been found that most of the heavy drinking adults had started consuming alcohol from a very young age (12-14). Hence, it is important to conduct the campaign for all age groups.

While planning for the campaign, the question comes out naturally that what are the needs of the community for which, the campaign will be undertaken. Some may argue that why the society needs to worry about one or two people catching deadly diseases due to excessive alcoholism. It can be said that the alcoholism has extremely negative impact on the society. Some of these problems are listed below. 

Domestic Violence – Thousands of people (especially the women) in the country are subject to domestic violence from their heavy drinker partners who cannot control themselves once they are completely drunk. Often, these domestic violence cases spread out from a room to a number of different households in the same neighbourhood. Moreover, these cases of domestic violence also have significant negative impacts on the psychology of young children. 

Promote Child Drinking – The problem with heavy drinking at home is that there are often children in the households who watch their parents drinking alcohol. They try to copy the same and take up drinking at a very young age. This results in easy addiction that they are unable to overcome even when they become adults (Knai et al., 2015). Moreover, children are more vulnerable to the after effects of drinking than the adults and hence, most of them are diagnosed with cancer or cirrhosis at a very young age. These problems will ultimately result in the downfall of the society at an accelerated rate. 

Grant Proposal Guidelines

In addition to the psychological issues caused by alcohol addiction, there are also significant impacts on the health of the common people. There are several medical conditions and diseases that are caused by excessive alcohol addiction that include heart diseases, stroke, cirrhosis of liver, throat cancer and others. These are mostly terminal illnesses and hence, there is no way out once someone catches one of these diseases. Hence, it is important to spread awareness regarding the excessive consumption of alcohol. 

While the project is not expected to have immediate impact on the society, it is still important to raise awareness among people regarding the harmful effects of alcohol consumption. The main objective of the campaign is to aware the citizens of Australia regarding the after effects that are not only affecting them but also their children and the future generation. 

Initially, the project will only be undertaken in the city of Melbourne, Australia. For this purpose, around 200 people will need to be recruited who will conduct the campaign around various residential and public places of the city. For the recruitment of the necessary number of people, an online recruitment drive will be initiated through various popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Since most of the younger generation are active in these platforms, it will not be hard to gather 200 enthusiastic people for the purpose of the campaign. There are also places to extend the campaigns to other major cities of the country like Canberra, Sydney, Hobart, Adelaide, Perth and others once this campaign is successfully executed. 

The campaign will be first started by rallies and distribution of leaflets that will contain specific information regarding the harmful effects of alcohol consumption. After sometime, video projectors will be setup in various public gathering sites and video demonstrations will be given to the people regarding the harmful effects of alcoholism with pictures and videos from real life case studies.

The goal of the campaign is to spread awareness among the people of Australia to avoid and stop drinking to prevent the negative impacts on health caused by alcohol. 

The objectives of the project are listed as follows.

• To aware the children and young people about harmful effects of drinking and that they should not drink at any point of their lives
• To aware the adults regarding the harmful effects of drinking and the impact it has on their children and families
• To aware the adults about solutions to their drinking problems so they stop drinking

6. Project Strategies  

The entire project will be executed based on a certain set of strategies that will drive the project forward towards its end goal. The main parts of the project strategy include the following. 

The project needs to be run because alcoholism is claiming lives at an accelerated pace in the country. In addition, more and more people are constantly getting affected by various terminal illnesses due to excessive consumption of alcohol. As a result of the excessive alcohol drinking, the young generation of the country is also getting affected as more and more young people are getting affected by excessive addiction of alcohol. According to the National Health Survey of 2014-15, the following data have been collected.

Project Description

Based on the data collected during the National Health Survey, 17.4% of the Australian adults consumed more than two standard drinks per day on an average and in the process, they exceeded the lifetime risk guideline. This was more prevalent in men as almost 25% of all men exceeded the lifetime risk guideline (World Health Organization & World Health Organization. Management of Substance Abuse Unit, 2014). Furthermore, the data also states that the problem is most visible in Western Australia where 20% of the people exceeded the lifetime risk guideline. 

The 2009 NHMRC guidelines state that during the consumption of alcohol, the chances of alcohol related injury increase significantly with the increase in the amount of alcohol consumed. The guidelines also state that the safe limit for the consumption of alcohol is four standard drinks per day and exceeding this limit will increase the chances of alcohol related injury significantly irrespective of gender or any other factor. 

From the data collected in 2014-15, it has been found that around 44.0% of all Australians aged 18 years and over exceeded the single occasion risk threshold of consuming more than four standard drinks at least once in the past year, similar to the data collected in the 2011-12 survey (44.7%). It has also been found that more males disregarded the guidelines than the women (56.8% and 31.7% respectively) (Thom et al., 2016).

The survey data also state that more and more young people are interested in drinking and are likely to take up drinking habits at an young age. In the survey of 2014-15, over two-thirds (69.4%) of males aged 18-24 years consumed more than four standard drinks at least once in the past year, while 60.6% of females of the same age exceeded the guideline. This is a very alarming statistic that reflects the picture regarding the drinking problem in the country.

The highest proportion of adults in the Northern Territory (47.8%) exceeded the guideline followed by Western Australia (47.0%), while New South Wales and Victoria had the lowest rates (both 42.5%) of people who exceeded the guideline limit. 

Considering minimal success of the previous health campaigns conducted in Australia, it can be said that instead of expecting for success, actual focus should be on the process through which the campaign will be conducted. The main target will be to gain interest of people rather than executing just another campaign about which the people do not show any interest.

Health Issue

Previous strategies had one major gap – they did not emphasize much on the psychological behaviour of the people and only focused on the drinking problem. However, in this campaign, special counselling sessions will also be conducted in which, the people can share their experiences and thoughts due to which they drink beyond limits. Heavy drinkers will also be provided options for therapy through which, they can be able to avoid drinking and minimize their addictions. The strategies for the project also aim to address the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion by utilizing the specified steps that will be followed during the campaign. 

For the estimation, it has been found that the overall budget required for the initial campaign is around $10,000. This budget covers the payments that are to be made to the health staffs and counsellors who will take active part in the project for the counselling sessions that will be offered to the heavy drinkers. Mostly, the drinkers who are interested in quitting will be offered to take part in the counselling sessions. The budget of the project has been set based on the following estimations shown.

It can be seen that most of the costs considered for the funding requirements include the resources and equipments required for the project and the payments that are to be made for the health staffs who will be willing to promote the awareness campaign. However, these costs are subjected to change but for the initial part of the campaign, $10,000 of funding is expected to be sufficient.

Sustainability is an essential requirement of the project as the project is focussed on awareness and finding long term solution for prevention of a major problem. Hence, the project must be sustainable in order to accomplish the actual mission of the project. The main problem regarding the project is the availability of funding. While initially funding will not be a problem due to the noble cause of the project, later funding will not be easily available once the scope of the project increases significantly as well as the campaign is extended over other cities in the country. No specific entity will provide sufficient funds for the expansion of the campaign as it has no definite monetary value or cost benefit. However, the presence of social media can come to the aid and provide a source of funding for the campaign. It is expected that the younger generation will be very much interested in the campaign and once the initial campaign is successful, crowdfunding can be initiated that will generate sufficient funds for further campaigns. There will be no specific funding limits and the people who are very much interested in the campaign can make donations for funding the future campaigns. The entire crowdfunding process can be executed over the social media platform for maximum reach and boost of popularity. 

Target Group

Reference List 

Aboujaoude, E., Savage, M. W., Starcevic, V., & Salame, W. O. (2015). Cyberbullying: Review of an old problem gone viral. Journal of adolescent health, 57(1), 10-18.

Babor, T. F., Robaina, K., & Jernigan, D. (2015). The influence of industry actions on the availability of alcoholic beverages in the African region. Addiction, 110(4), 561-571.

Buykx, P., Gilligan, C., Ward, B., Kippen, R., & Chapman, K. (2015). Public support for alcohol policies associated with knowledge of cancer risk. International Journal of Drug Policy, 26(4), 371-379.

Carey, K. B., Scott-Sheldon, L. A., Garey, L., Elliott, J. C., & Carey, M. P. (2016). Alcohol interventions for mandated college students: A meta-analytic review. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 84(7), 619.

Crawford?Williams, F., Fielder, A., Mikocka?Walus, A., & Esterman, A. (2015). A critical review of public health interventions aimed at reducing alcohol consumption and/or increasing knowledge among pregnant women. Drug and alcohol review, 34(2), 154-161.

Critchlow, N., Moodie, C., Bauld, L., Bonner, A., & Hastings, G. (2016). Awareness of, and participation with, digital alcohol marketing, and the association with frequency of high episodic drinking among young adults. Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, 23(4), 328-336.

Gainsbury, S., Hing, N., & Suhonen, N. (2014). Professional help-seeking for gambling problems: Awareness, barriers and motivators for treatment. Journal of Gambling Studies, 30(2), 503-519.

Gell, L., Ally, A., Buykx, P., Hope, A., & Meier, P. (2015). Alcohol’s harm to others. Institute of Alcohol Studies: London, UK.

Hing, N., Russell, A. M., Gainsbury, S. M., & Nuske, E. (2016). The public stigma of problem gambling: Its nature and relative intensity compared to other health conditions. Journal of Gambling Studies, 32(3), 847-864.

Howard, S. J., Gordon, R., & Jones, S. C. (2014). Australian alcohol policy 2001–2013 and implications for public health. BMC Public Health, 14(1), 848.

Knai, C., Petticrew, M., Durand, M. A., Eastmure, E., & Mays, N. (2015). Are the Public Health Responsibility Deal alcohol pledges likely to improve public health? An evidence synthesis. Addiction, 110(8), 1232-1246.

Knai, C., Petticrew, M., Durand, M. A., Scott, C., James, L., Mehrotra, A., ... & Mays, N. (2015). The Public Health Responsibility deal: has a public–private partnership brought about action on alcohol reduction?. Addiction, 110(8), 1217-1225.

Kubacki, K., Rundle-Thiele, S., Pang, B., & Buyucek, N. (2015). Minimizing alcohol harm: A systematic social marketing review (2000–2014). Journal of Business Research, 68(10), 2214-2222.

Nagpal, R., Nagpal, N., Mehendiratta, M., Marya, C. M., & Rekhi, A. (2014). Usage of betel quid, areca nut, tobacco, alcohol and level of awareness towards their adverse effects on health in a north Indian rural population. Oral Health Dent Manag, 13(1), 81-6.

Overton, T. L., Rives, T. E., Hecht, C., Shafi, S., & Gandhi, R. R. (2015). Distracted driving: prevalence, problems, and prevention. International journal of injury control and safety promotion, 22(3), 187-192.

Petticrew, M., Maani Hessari, N., Knai, C., & Weiderpass, E. (2018). How alcohol industry organisations mislead the public about alcohol and cancer. Drug and alcohol review, 37(3), 293-303.

Thom, B., Herring, R., Thickett, A., & Duke, K. (2016). The Alcohol Health Alliance: The emergence of an advocacy coalition to stimulate policy change. British Politics, 11(3), 301-323.

World Health Organization, & World Health Organization. Management of Substance Abuse Unit. (2014). Global status report on alcohol and health, 2014. World Health Organization.